EDITORIAL:A sad chapter in city politics

Thirty-seven months.

Thirty-seven months is the amount of time former Huntington Beach Mayor Pam Julien Houchen will spend in jail for her part in a 2-year-old condo conversion scam. That crime, in which she and four partners illegally altered 15 apartment buildings into 45 condominiums while avoiding the permits and fees required for the work, netted Houchen about $500,000. In total, the scam to sell the condos brought the four some $11 million.

It is the end to yet another sad chapter in Huntington Beach city politics, one that followed all too closely former Mayor Dave Garofalo’s guilty plea to felony charges involving council votes.

Houchen could have served even more time and potentially been fined more than the $140,000 she was charged had she not resigned from office and then pleaded guilty to the scam charges, after which she cooperated with authorities.

It is appalling that Houchen had to end up cooperating with authorities instead of cooperating with her fellow council members and her constituents to make Huntington Beach a better place.

A year ago, when Houchen pleaded guilty, we noted how sad it was that members of the City Council — whose job it is to serve the people of this city — had not learned a lesson from Garofalo’s fall. That lesson is simple: Those who are called upon to serve should never use their power to serve themselves instead.

It can be put another way: “Public officials will never be looked at quite the same way, and that’s a stain on all of us.”

Those were the words of U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter to Houchen at her sentencing.

Houchen did not learn that lesson in time. Is it too much to hope that her guilty plea and now time in jail will be the lesson that sticks with those now serving and those who will one day serve this community?